Private prisons have a tough road to climb when it comes to garnering favor with the general public. One reason why is that private prison corporations such as Corrections Corporation of America and GEO Group (the company at the center of the "Owlcatraz" debacle at Florida Atlantic University) have built a very profitable business model around the fact that most states and the federal government incarcerate way too many people and need some outside guidance to stem the related costs.

But as the Austin American-Statesmanrecently showed, there are states as traditionally conservative as Texas that have done a considerable amount to reduce their prison populations in recent years. What does this mean for private prison companies? If the Mineral Wells Pre-Parole Transfer Facility in Mineral Wells, Tex. is any indication, the answer is: nothing good. Or at least nothing profitable. From the Associated Press:

A key Senate panel has endorsed the closure of a $54 million private state prison in North Texas that ranks among the most dangerous lockups in the state.

The 2,200-bed prison in Mineral Wells is run by Corrections Corporation of America and has been under lawmaker scrutiny for several years. The Senate Finance Committee on Monday upheld recommendations to let the contract expire in August.

Democratic state Sen. John Whitmire says there is plenty of room to transfer prisoners elsewhere because of 12,000 empty beds statewide. He said the Mineral Wells facility is so ill-designed that a golf net is being used to stop contraband from being tossed over.

Republican Sen. Craig Estes, whose district includes the prison, said the economic impact of closing the prison would devastate the community.

It stands to reason that if states begin to reduce prison populations, they won't need private contractors to run prisons those states can't afford. And since both Republicans and Democrats are now touting the benefits of prison "austerity," things could get interesting for private prison contractors in upcoming years.

Though, admittedly, they won't get that interesting for a while; there's a bit of wiggle room in the prison population nationwide (to wit: "Over the past 30 years, according to a new report by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the federal prison population has jumped from 25,000 to 219,000 inmates, an increase of nearly 790 percent. Swollen by such figures, for years the United States has incarcerated far more people than any other country, today imprisoning some 716 people out of every 100,000."). But still.